Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 20.3 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 8Mb.

As is often the case with cameras of this ilk, the Canon PowerShot SX730 HS performs best in bright light where the small sensor is capable of producing some beautiful images. Colours have that warmth and vibrancy that Canon is known for, while detail is well represented at lower ISOs.

You can get some nice shallow depth of field effects if you activate macro focusing and get close to the subject, despite the fact that the maximum aperture is a relatively narrow f/3.5 at the widest part of the lens.

The overall impression of detail is good up to around ISO 800, while even at ISO 1600, images are decent enough when sharing at normal printing and web sizes. If you examine closely you can see there’s some loss of detail and smudginess, but it’s not too worrying unless you’re shooting somewhere really dark.

All-purpose metering does a reasonably good job of keeping exposures correct, and it’s rare you need to touch the exposure compensation controls unless you’re photographing something in a very high contrast situation.

At the far reach of the telephoto lens, images are a little softer than that the wide end, but if you’re only planning on using the images at normal printing and web sizes, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The best performance is from the middle of the zoom, rather than at its furthest reaches.

Noise

The Canon PowerShot SX730 HS has seven sensitivity settings at full resolution. Auto mode uses a range between ISO 80 and ISO 3200, or you can switch to one of the creative shooting modes to manually select these settings.

Focal Range

Chromatic Aberrations

The Canon PowerShot SX730 HS handled chromatic aberrations fairly well during the review, with purple and green fringing present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the examples below.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The close focusing of the Canon PowerShot SX730 HS at wide-angle is a mere 1cm. It does mean that there's little light getting in when you do that and the edge definition drops off leaving around 50% of the image in focus.

Macro

Flash

The Canon PowerShot SX730 HS' flash can only manage a relatively weak 4m range and hence there's some fairly obvious vignetting in our wide-angle test shot taken at a distance of 1.5m. The flash has four modes: Auto, On, Off and Slow Synchro, plus a separate setting to enable or disable red-eye reduction. Whether this is active or not, the camera successfully avoids any trace of red-eye.